WHY?
Small children, as they grow, ask "Why" and the wise parent, guardian or teacher has a reply ready.
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It has always been that way. The infant, seeking. Even before it can speak, the child tries to ascertain its place in this world. Before it learns to communicate with speech, the very sense of having been touched, held, loved or moved about is an adventure in exploration of some of the potential wonders of the new and open world. The child expresses an understanding of what is being said or done to them by relaxing and drifting into its known security of sleep. Yes, even at that early age, the child has questioned to find out more about his conditions as they seem to be set or cried out. and the adult replies with touching, loving care and movement.
Later on, when the child forms some sort of communiction with older folks, even if it be only in gestures, eye movment and attmpts to grasp hings beyond its reach , the child asking why things are as they seem to be. The concept of "why" is essential to human growth and maturity. We are not content to simply be told that something exists; we want to know for what purpose it came to exist and how it can be of value to us in a personal sense.
None of us remembers the time when we, as infants, begged for reaons why things were as they seemed to be but we all remember becoming a bit older, of acquiring speech capabilities and of asking "Why, Daddy?" and " Why, Mamma?" without end it seems. Those years are vital ones. The age level, let's say from four to fourteeen , is a time of success or failure in many ways for both child and parent. When that growing child asks "why?" the mother or father had best have a much more accurate reply ready ...one which is based on fact. The playful, evasive and often ludicrous answers used up to that age of four no longer suffices. Parents, at that four-ish time of change, stop being baby sitters and become governess or tutor types.
If you can think back over those years, try to do a re-run on how you fared as a child or as a parent/. You will find many instances of how well you answered the child's questions as to why things were as they seeme to be, or how often you failed. In those year an inquiring offspring is going to seek for such answers and they very often find them, or think they do, in peer intellects or from sources which are nbt he best for child upbringing.
And the "why" thing does not end there. The kids are gowing up and having their own experiences with their own children. But wait.
In old age, I think we can safely say at about eighty or ninety years of age or so, you begin to notide that your peers are droppingf off one by one. Many of them die when they are still twenty years your junior.. Questions of "why?" enter your mind, naturally. You are now eighty or ninety years of age seeking answers to "why?" all over again. Why is it, you wonder, that so-and-so, younger than you by several years is dead and gone, yet you continue to live. Do you have any purpose for continuing to live, you wonder? ? Why have familes you have known divided and scatter and scattered?
What, if anything, you ask is the purpose of my being here? Why>
To whom do I address such questions?
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That depends so much, does it not. on how your parents answered our childhood question: "Who made me?"
a.l.m. January 30, 2004 [C560wds]
